Lesson Topics: teaching, education, technology
Skill Focus: Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 1.75 hours
Lesson Plan Download: state-education-teaching-advanced-042025.docx
- The lesson begins with warm-up questions about education and teaching.
- Before viewing the video, students preview phrases featuring key vocabulary and match the bolded terms to their definitions.
- The lesson's video is 1:36 minutes in length. It features a North American teacher complaining about her inability to connect with her technology-addicted students. The video concludes with her saying that it's "definitely not the teachers' fault."
- The video is followed by comprehension and follow-up questions.
- Next, students review the ten vocabulary items by matching them to their corresponding definitions.
- After vocabulary matching, students form discussion questions with the target vocabulary.
- The lesson has one debate and then a larger debate scenario entitled The Roundtable of Blame that asks students to pick a role (e.g. teacher, student, tech company CEO) and then argue why others are to blame for the current educational woes, not themselves.
- The lesson has one roleplay, in which a young teacher tries to give advice to an older teacher on how she can make her classes more engaging for youth today.
- After a sentence completion activity to reinforce the lesson's vocabulary, students review vocabulary and collocations before discussing some final discussion questions.
ADVANCED (C1/C2) Lesson on the Current State of Education
Warm-up-Questions
- How has education changed since the days of your parents?
- Have you ever wanted to be a teacher? Why or why not?
- Is it easier to teach children today than thirty years ago?
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This lesson plan was created by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). Site members may photocopy and edit the file for their classes. Permission is not given to rebrand the lesson, redistribute it on another platform, or sell it as part of commercial course curriculum. ChatGPT was used to generate answer keys and some famous quotations. For questions, contact the author.
Comprehension Question Answer Key
- …
- The speaker believes that public education is in crisis. Students are emotionally absent, addicted to phones, and no longer respond to traditional teaching methods or discipline.
- Dopamine is a chemical in the brain that creates feelings of pleasure. The teacher argues that students are used to constant dopamine from their phones, so they feel bored or withdrawn in class without it.
- The teacher would likely disagree. They believe students are already disconnected and that punishments don't work because students don’t care about grades or consequences.
- ... (Expected answers: frustrated, hopeless, urgent—supported by examples like “they’re not there” and comparisons to addiction.)
- ...
Vocabulary: 1- blurt out, 2- therapy, 3- impulsive, 4- self-reflection, 5- projection, 6- attribute, 7- snap at, 8- unconscious, 9- resentment, 10- suppress, 11- confront, 12- hostile
Top exports: The United States-petroleum, Canada- petroleum, Mexico-cars, China-communication devices, Brazil-soya beans, The U.K.-cars, France-aircraft, Germany-cars, South Korea-electronic circuits, Australia-coal, Greenland-fish, Russia- petroleum
Vocabulary: 1-set (someone) off, 2-apathy, 3-constant, 4-vacant, 5-capitalistic, 6-whatsoever, 7-addict, 8-withdrawal, 9-outright, 10-tune in
Collocations 1-d, 2-a, 3-e, 4-b, 5-c